The big difference between guns and martial arts weapons is this: If two people with guns go after each other, one a veteran shooter and the other a newbie, the latter has a much larger chance to "win" than two people in the same situation with, say, swords. Pointing and shooting does not compare to the fine swordsmanship one achieves by hard work a thorough training, even with all the tactical thinking that's involved.

In my experience, only somewhat "cheesy" masters require payment for advancing in grading. When I practiced Judo, my master asked for money to get me from yellow to orange (or green, can't quite recall) and I was instantly grossed out by the idea. Years later, I enrolled in a Choy Lee Fut school and my master is one of the most dedicated people I have ever seen, to the art itself and to his pupils. He would never (and probably will never) ask for any remuneration in exchange for an advance in ones carrier. Even if it might have become common pratice, I deem it rather nonsensical. After all, what would happen if one refused to pay? The master would keep the person at the same level and they would eventually get bored and drop the studies altogether. Not the best business model in my opinion.

Story time indeed.
The year was... 2013 actually... it happened in april. So I was waiting for my P.E teacher to arrive and was hanging out by the football field with a bunch of friends. The football field had a concrete floor and was about 10 feet lower than the platform me and my friends were standing on, and there was a barrier which was about waist high separating football field from where I was.

Relevant information: I was quite athletic back then, and was pretty good at jumping over stuff and climbing stuff. I mean abnormally good (not to brag or anything :P).

Anyway, one of my friends says "Hey, think you can jump over that barrier there?" I had jumped it many times in many different ways, but there was one way which I was always kind of afraid/knew I couldn't clear, which was to go with no running start, just hop over it. So, my brain had one of those truly full retard moments and was like "Hey, now's your chance to try that impossible shit you've always known you can't do..."
And so I did. And the thing is, I ALMOST cleared that, but the tip of my left foot hit the barrier, I lost my balance and crashed hard on the ground below, elbows first. At first I didn't really realize what had happened then I looked at my left elbow (which was completely and utterly disfigured) and I just thought "Well shit..." It didn't even hurt that bad, believe it or not. Everyone around me were flipping their shit, I heard a girl go like "OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG" and all I could think was "Wtf, just call an ambulance and get me to the hospital.", and I was pretty chill. At the hospital, the doctor couldn't even tell by the X-ray that it was an elbow he was looking at. I went into surgery right away and, well... Today I'm wearing a cast cause I went to remove some bolts n'shit last monday. My right arm functions pretty well, my left arm doesn't stretch or bend all the way and I can't turn my wrist, but hopefully I'll be able to, when I get this cast off.

TLDR: I went full retard.

If anyone's interested, here's how my arm looked about 2 weeks after surgery: http://imgur.com/a/8IdSo#0 (Not very NSFW, but might shock some ppl)